We parked our van at a hotel near Phoenix International Airport and flew to Kona, HI. We took the red eye home from Kona and immediately found the van’s battery dead as a door nail and needed to get it towed to the dealer. So long story short, we were tired and hungry by the time we got the van towed, secured a room and rental car in Scottsdale. We had heard good things about Biscuits Cafe and found this one on Hayden Rd near where we were staying. The biggest draw for me was homemade corned beef hash, but we found much more.

We visited Kona Hawaii at the beginning of March 2020 staying at the Royal Kona Hotel. After looking at various websites to determine where to have dinner, one restaurant kept coming up as a top pick. Broke Da Mouth Grindz and it was right across the street from the hotel. The short version of this review is, the food is way past awesome, the service is great and the prices are under what you’d expect to pay elsewhere near the water in Kona!

The Magnolia Pancake Haus at the Embassy Oaks Shopping Center in San Antonio is like stepping into a world of supreme decadence for a price you can afford. From the time you walk in the door, it’s like you’ve come over to a friends house for breakfast. There’s always a smile on their faces and are truly Texas friendly. Our waitress Christina greeted us with a happy “Welcome Ya’ll” made sure we had the essential coffee set up. We’d already done our homework the night before online and knew exactly what we wanted. For me it was their homemade corned beef hash and for my wife it was their signature Authentic Apfel Pfannekuchen (no I can’t pronounce it either, so I’ll use the English translation …Mmmmmm OMG Mmmmmmm).

Continuing on from the previous post on becoming a points
junkie, let’s talk about Hotel Loyalty programs. Not all programs are created
equal just as not all hotel chains are the same. Generally you’ll pick the
loyalty program for the hotel chain you use all the time. When you’re traveling
all over the US, you sometimes need to have all of them (at least the majors)
in your pocket to maximize the benefits. Some claim to have great benefits, but
in my experience, those benefits are hard to come by at times depending on the
program.

In this section, I’ll discuss different things you can do to save money, time or headaches while traveling. Hopefully these tips will make your travel experience more enjoyable. Whether you’re going on vacation, or traveling constantly like we are, it should not be stressful. These hints and tips are things I have learned along the way In all of the years I traveled the world for work and the last 16 months traveling the USA. Hopefully they help you too. Become a Point Junkie

When we started this epic cross country retirement trip in 2018 we made our way to New Mexico to for our first major bucket list item, the Albuquerque NM International Balloon Fiesta. While we have been developing and changing this list along the way, this has always been something we wanted to see first hand. It was, in a word, amazing!

One of the things I’m looking for on this epic trip is who makes the best corned beef hash around the country. Obviously, I don’t have the budget the actors and chefs do on the Food Channel, so I have to do a little research on the internet to find others reviews, look at menus, etc. So on our trek home from Fort Meyers, we were in the vicinity of Ocala and I did a simple search for “homemade corned beef hash near me”. One of the first restaurants it showed was Toojay’s Original Gourmet Deli in Lady Lake FL. So we set the GPS to 990 Delmar Dr Lady Lake FL and took a little detour. What a great surprise.

Madame Tussauds Wax Museum
Is part of the Orlando Eye complex on International Drive. It was … OK. I’ve been to these before and they always impressed me as a lot of hype with little substance. This one at least dressed things up a bit and had interesting facts about each of the celebs that were exhibited.

The Orlando Eye
is a huge anchored Ferris wheel that takes about 27 minutes to make a round trip. It is actually part of a complex that houses a few attractions. While the cars can hold up to 10 people, business was slow enough on this weekday afternoon to accommodate individual parties (even if you only had 2 people). Continue reading “The Orlando Eye, Orlando, FL”